Savior (5 page)

I told you. They're submarines. I've even seen choppers lifting stuff
and guys hanging from ropes.

Al pulled the binoculars away from his face.

How do you know all this?

Let's just say I'm in on the play.

Okay. So you're some kind of government spook.

Like I said, I'm only telling you 'cause you asked and you seem like a nice guy. This place is about to pop.

Robert scratched his head one more time. His eyes glazed and once again there was something forlorn and threadbare about him.

Only thing is, nobody seems to be doing anything about it. I'm sending word up the line and I have yet to see any reaction. Task Force South is asleep at the switch. That scares me more than the subs.

Ricky. Let me have the tablet.

Da
aad.
              Come on.

Al gave the binoculars back to Newman
, who put them away awkwardly in his bathing suit pocket. Ricky put his bags on the sand and Al took the bag with the tablet. He ripped the tape off the tablet and unwrapped it.

What do you think of this?

What is it?

A Mayan artifact, apparently. Ricky bought it off Coconut Juan at the surf shop.
Juan was very worked up about it.

Didn't want to sell it to me at first
, but I convinced him, Ricky added.

Newman took
the tablet from Al and turned it over, studying it.

How did you convince him?

I explained to him how the Mayans had the first fully written system and told him I'd read the Popol Vuh in fifth grade, which wasn't really true since Mom read it to me, but how they had the concept of zero before anyone else, and. . .

This is very interesting
. So Coconut Juan was the receptor.

He’s a collector, I guess
. I thought it was a fake.

No, it's not
. There's been all kinds of chatter about something like this. The Chocomal. There could be some people very interested in this.

That's what he was all worried about. Said they'd kill him for it. Why?

I don't exactly know. I do know some Iranian, Chinese and Russian scientists have been looking for some time, almost twenty years, for some archaeological clue. Their experts claim they know about a code underlying the frequency of sound waves, based on ancient secrets of Mayan astronomers, that they've been trying to use to build what you might call the ultimate weapon. There have been some disappearances. Researchers, anthropologists. Blamed on the drug cartels. Some say Samael Chagnon has an interest in it.

Who's he?

Very strange, secretive guy. Leader of the
Santos Muertos
gang.

Well, what do you think we ought to do with this? asked Al.

Keep it out of their hands. If I were you, like I said, I'd get out of town. It's been nice chatting.

Okay. Let's go Ricky.

Al wrapped the tablet and carefully put it back in its bag. Newman had disappeared down the trail and out of sight at a velocity that was surprising for someone as large and decrepit as he apparently was.

Looks like the tide's going out, Ricky. Look at the surfers.

There was a knot of them beginning to form again out beyond the breakers. It would have been nice to have binoculars to watch them from up in the dunes, but then again, it wasn't strictly necessary. The senses were our windows on the world and exercising them every day helped to keep them clean. Al was dismayed by people working on computers such as his half-blind brother Tony. Tony might be a genius but he had all but destroyed his senses not to mention his mind in the pursuit of his arcane academic interests. That's why he had wanted Ricky to play football, for the extra-alive richness of it, the mud and proximity to danger, the heightened sense of being connected to the source of all creation.

All that talk about the drug cartels and the submarines out on the horizon seemed very far away, not real at all. Al wondered if it was some kind of phenomenon like deer being caught in headlights, the calm that had come over the two of them, Ricky and
him, as they walked back to the apartment. The sun high overhead beat down on them, and in combination with the hunger and the strange sense of displacement caused by Newman's appearance on the trail, made it hard to think.

They surfed for three days straight while
the tides came in and out and the rain clouds swept in. It was the heaviest deluge in years. The low-lying beach town did not suffer badly; but on the television at the restaurant bar, the newscasts ran stories of floods and drowned bodies washing up on the beaches of the Caribbean coast and crocodiles gorging themselves on dogs and cats caught in the sweep of the flood water.

Ricky got very good. Even in the low tides
, he could manage the ladder, the erratic pattern of telescoped waves breaking far offshore in the early evenings. Al struggled getting to his knees on the board. His face took on a swollen look with the battering he was receiving. He had not shaved in days. He would go home while the sun was hanging above the horizon in a melting after-image and cook dinner and drink a couple of bottles of beer to get over the pain in his joints. Then Ricky would come in and shower. They ate silently, both of them awkward without the intervening voice of Mary to save them from their self-pity. They would run down the day's surfing and that would be it. Al tried starting a conversation, but it was never on something that Ricky would respond to. Then Al hit on the idea of talking about the future, conjecturing about the state of the world. Ricky had many ideas on this, gleaned from the pages of Popular Science and the like, and Al liked to hear the wild and, in his opinion, absurd theories that had sprouted forth. Men would live in bubbles on distant planets or in domes under the ocean.

On the fifth day
, Ricky had a hard time getting out of bed at dawn as they had been doing. He struggled to the kitchen and had his coffee with lots of milk and sugar. Al sipped on his and had a thought, observing Ricky's sluggish progress.

Hey. Maybe it
's time to head up country to see Evelio.

Okay. When do we go?

Well, we have five more days before we're due to fly home. We could go for a couple of days up to San Juan Grande and see if we could find him. Remember the cafe there with the hummingbirds?

Yeah.

If you've had enough surfing.

I don't know. I'm kind of exhausted.

Me too.

I mean it's been fun. But I might need a break.

We've been going all out for three days. At least you have. You managed the ladder, didn't you?

You too. Lets go up to the mountains.

Yeah, okay. We'll give Coconut Juan the boards and go rent a car.

After a breakfast of noodles and tuna fish salad with toast, they packed their belongings into the two duffel bags and laid them by the door. Al finished off the coffee in the pot and hurried Ricky along. He was stuffing the tablet down inside his duffel bag, taking out clothes and sneakers to make room. Al didn't know why he was suddenly in a hurry. It was one of those inexplicable mood changes. Now that it was time to go, he just wanted to get on the road and out of there.

Come on, you can finish later. Let's get the boards back and get the car.

All right.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to nag.

No, you're right. There's only so much time. Although I'm sure you could have done it, Dad.

Maybe. Next time I'll get a better board. That'll make all the difference.

There was a crowd outside the surf shop. It was as if the entire town had congregated on the corner. A clutch of jeeps with the sunshield insignia of the
Policia Nacional Civil
was parked at odd angles in the road. Most of the people were silent. Ricky and Al cautiously approached the crowd outside the door. A policeman saw them and motioned for them to leave the boards against the wall. Through the crowd, Al saw Coconut Juan's American girlfriend inside crying as a policewoman hugged her around the shoulders. He turned around, and there was Newman still in his bathing suit, his wizened, brown, shirtless, sagging chest heaving as he stood on his toes in his flip flops to get a view inside. A wailing ambulance came around the corner and screeched to a stop behind the police jeeps. There was mud spattered on the windshield. The back door came open, and the paramedics hopped down and stretched their legs.

¿
Que pasó
? Al asked a stoutish gentleman in a button-down, short-sleeved shirt and a Suchitepequez FC baseball cap.

Parece que
un hombre fue asesinado por arma blanca.

¿
Quien?

Parece que el dueño. El Juan este del Coco.

Ah. Gracias.

Pobre señor. Que nos cuide Dios.

Hey, Ricky.

What?

Let's go.

What happened?

Coconut Juan's dead.

Ricky didn't say anything, clearly thinking, trying out this new idea. Newman looked at them both from a distance with a strange, expressionless face that Al interpreted as fear. It was already starting. He took Newman's fear to possibly be a reflection of his own. You could create your own reality if you put your mind to it. But the reverse could also be true, that your fear could transmute into a collective nightmare of the highest order
, even though the individual's soul could never be extinguished or even altered, for that matter. That fact calmed him again. Or maybe it was Ricky. He was a pretty cool customer. His legs churned up the road and he darted to avoid the motorcycles that zoomed by.

That's them again, Dad.

Who?

The
Santos
.

Why do they all ride motorcycles all day?

It's the best way to get around here.

The car rental
business was an air-conditioned island of calm. The man behind the desk got off his cell phone and smiled.

We need a car.

For how many, eh days?

I don't know.
Probably three, said Al.

The man took out a form and started to fill in the boxes.
Ricky was starting to wander around. Al thought of Mary and had a sudden feeling of being out of time, floating in an endless vacuum. He could almost swear she was right behind him and he turned, half hopeful that she would be, that her presence would wipe away the nervous tension he felt. There was nothing there, yet the feeling of her presence was still almost tangible. He spoke to her, echoing the words in his mind, the last words he had said to her at the hospital.

You'll be here in my heart and watching over Ricky through my eyes. Don't you worry, Mary.

We have the Suzuki or the Hyundai.

The Hyundai is fine.

And, Ricky? His body was tugging him in all sorts of different directions. This might be the last time they would spend together before he was off on his own life to somewhere different.

Four
—The Klondike

They were married in Castle Rock, New Jersey across the road from the house Mary had grown up in. There was a cupola in a neighbor's field that in the late 19th century had been intended as a setting for amateur theatrical productions and the like. In the distance, beyond the field, were the Cumberland County Fairgrounds and Union Lake. The neighbor had leased the field to Mary's parents for the day. They had set up a large tent beside the cupola for the food. Mary's college roommates were dressed in green and yellow dresses and Al had his attendants in tuxedos, his best friend Joe Limosa up from Florida from Aviatrix and his brother Tony from Burlington, where he still worked in those days. Mary's father, who worked as an accountant for a Philadelphia media company that published magazines for equestrians, water skiers, and other specialized outdoor enthusiasts, walked her down the path in the field to where they waited. The guests sat in the cupola and cheered her in her white dress that had taken her months to make. Her mother, a woman who was in disgrace in her family because she had forced a divorce so that she could go overseas and teach English, whispered behind Al's ear.

She looks so much older in that dress.

The Reverend Pamela Grayson, the minister from the Methodist church, was a large, jolly woman in robes, who registered official mirth on her face as she lifted up Al and Mary’s conjoined hands like boxing champs when she pronounced them man and wife and somebody, nobody knew who, some middle-aged meathead, gave a big Bronx cheer when they kissed.

They flew to Seattle for the Carnival Line cruise of Alaska's inner passage, and a limousine picked them up at the airport. During the drive in the limo, Mary felt sick and Al told her to lie down and put her head in his lap. He stroked her forehead and hoped she would be all right. They were supposed to stop at the Pike Place Market, but Al told the driver to go straight to the hotel. Mary sat up groggily.

It's just bloat, she said.

We'll get plenty of rest on the cruise, Mary. No worries.

In the hotel room that night, they had steak and champagne with the room service. Mary ate the asparagus tips and barely touched her food. Then they watched the lights of the harbor out the large window, pulling the curtains back all the way. The television stayed off at Mary's insistence. Al thought she looked beautiful in her nightgown after she had showered and put her wet hair in a bun.

Are you feeling better?

Yes. Being with you always makes me feel better.

She snuggled next to him in bed and they just lay like that in each other's arms in the half
-lit room listening to the muffled sounds of the western city on the edge of the continent.

There's something wild in the air here, she said.

I know.

Can you feel it? I could feel it in the limo, just going under those underpasses along the highway. So overgrown and lush and wild.

Yeah. It's different all right. And Alaska's going to be even better.

I wonder if we shouldn't have just stayed here and explored on our own. Eight days. Will that be too much?

Oh, no. It'll be perfect. There's music and a jogging track on deck, and karaoke.

I'm not a jogger.

It will be nice, Mary. You'll see.

He pulled her closer to him and kissed her.
Her kiss back was strong, passionate, but he felt that he would crush her with the intensity of his feeling.

Mary. Are you sure you're okay?

I'm fine, Al, she said, with a hint of exasperation.

They made love, not for the first time, and it had a hint of savagery in it, of inexplicable forces beyond their control.

The next morning they boarded the cruise ship, took a cabin on deck with a balcony, and settled in by walking down to the shopping gallery and inspecting the gift shop. The ship was very luxurious and stable, with almost no feel or sound from the water below. There were hundreds of people on board, and Mary felt overwhelmed. They retreated to the cabin and unpacked. Al was very excited and couldn't stay inside the cabin very long.

You go and have a walk
.

He went to the deck and watched the land slip away. Now he was a married man and it was like his youth lay behind him and the mystery of the future was like this, a boat, a large comfortable boat. It was a good life, and many of the conversations he overheard on the deck reflected the sense that the people onboard felt graced somehow with the good fortune of sharing this very day. Al wished Mary felt better, but part of the mystery of th
is new life was learning how to match each other's rhythms and habits. He felt sure she would enjoy herself soon. When it became evident that she would spend most of the cruise inside the cabin, the realization dawned on him that there were shades of blessedness and his was perhaps not the most vivid of all possible colorations.

But she felt better by the sixth day. At Skagway they both hiked with the more intrepid voyagers up the trail taken by the
Gold Rush miners. Then they sat in the Gold Rush cemetery on a cold stone bench and Mary, flush in the face after the hike, told Al about a dream she'd had.

I was traveling in a boat, sailing north. The boat was being rowed. There was a castle the men were trying to get to before the ice froze. There was no way back because the ice was freezing behind us for some odd reason.

It was a dream, Mary. Just a dream.

But the strangest thing w
as the flying fish. They were trying to warn us but I was the only one who could understand. They would fly into the air and spell out a message with their bodies. A secret about the castle.

Wow. That sounds very vivid. Maybe you should be a writer, Mary.

No, you're the writer, Al.

Not very good, apparently.

Keep trying, honey. That book will get published someday. Flying is something everyone is interested in, after all. Do you believe dreams have some kind of basis in reality, Al?

I don't know. Probably, yes. I don't ever have strange dreams like that, though. Not since I was a boy.

I think there's an alternative universe where our dreams take place. Just like in the books by Borges. Have you ever read him?

No.

Very strange. The characters meet themselves in dreams. There are parallel universes and multiverses, long before the physicists even knew such things could exist.

Could they, Mary?

I think so. There are probably portals and alternative worlds if we can imagine them. What are your dreams, Al? I'd like to know your alternative universes. I told you about one of mine.

I told you. I don't have any strange dreams. I'm like the gold miners buried here. My dreams are about concrete things, the material world. Your ideas about alternative universes and the like, I think you would have been burnt at the stake in the Middle Ages.

I know. But isn't that what makes us human? Our belief in progress? We're seeking answers. I just imagine we need to look harder in the places we already know. Like dreams.

It's beyond my pay scale, Mary.

That's not true. You just need to expand your notion of reality. You need some new metaphors.

That's why I married you. For your metaphors. A dream about a castle across frozen water.

That's beautiful, Al. Truly. I'm so happy with you. And this cruise is just perfect.

But you've been sick almost every day, Mary.

I'm getting over it now. Look at all these brave tombstones. All these people seeking their fortunes.

They were very brave. Maybe desperate.

No more desperate than we are. Nobody knows why they are here. Might as well strike out for the Klondike as stay put in your comfortable niche.

They stayed in the cemetery until it got uncomfortably cold
, then slowly stood together. Mary stretched and rubbed her arms. Al inspected some of the closest headstones. He believed he had ancestors that had sailed for California in the days of the gold fever. He could have been one of them, although his book about flight,
Man's Eternal Hunger
, was about as adventurous as he got. It was his life's work, he felt, besides Mary and the family they would have together.

He felt it was good that they stand together and observe a moment of silence for their souls. Mary agreed. Neither Al nor Mary were churchgoers, but her mother had been when she was growing up
, and Mary wanted to start going to church.

They prayed together in that far northern cemetery, for
themselves, for their families, for the children they would soon have, God willing, and for all of mankind.

N
othing left of the gold rush now, except a tourist trail. Many people thought gold would inevitably replace the dollar. Al thought about the coming crash, and his book languishing on his desk at home in Florida, and the Aviatrix gig and the Iceland Air people at that very moment looking for 757 parts. Adding it all up gave a sum of what? How could you measure a life? How did God do it? He still didn't know.